


give me all you got, don't hold back (clap along if you feel like a room without a roof)

by atlasky



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 4+1 Things, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 01:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6834439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlasky/pseuds/atlasky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I can’t believe that you doubt Captain America’s ability to treat a woman right," Natasha mutters.<br/>Clint shrugs.<br/>(Or, the four times Steve shows Natasha that he loves her and the one time he tells her.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	give me all you got, don't hold back (clap along if you feel like a room without a roof)

**Author's Note:**

> list of prompts in the ending. come yell at me about civil war on tumblr @romanovajames.

.

**1.**

She has no opinion about onion rings, despite how much Clint despises the food. Because he hates it so much, naturally she had to order it. Clint pushes her greasy onion rings as far as possible from him on the small restaurant table and scrunches his nose. “I get that you want me to shut up about how you and Rogers are a couple now, but this is a whole level of low.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Natasha says. She grabs a couple of onion rings, puts them in her mouth, and chews messily just to spite him. She smacks her lips and he glowers.

“Onion rings are the highest form of fraud,” Clint states, pointing a finger at her indignantly. A waitress who passes by raises her eyebrows yet Clint isn’t done. He gets a little too passionate about this sometimes. “Who pays – “he grabs the plastic covered menu and shoves it in front of Natasha’s face. “ _Six dollars_ for flimsy onion layers covered in flour? They don’t even taste good.”

Natasha swats his hand away. “Perhaps other people aren’t as cheap as you are.”

Clint says, “That is absolute slander. Being smart about money doesn’t mean I’m cheap.”

Natasha stares pointedly at the three poorly stitched patches on his elbow. Clint grins and begins to roll some spaghetti on his fork. “Anyway,” he starts, and Natasha groans. “What? You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“I swear Barton, you’re the worst,” Natasha complains. “You’re like a dog – you just don’t let go of things, do you?”

“Hey,” Clint says, with mock innocence. He shoves the roll of spaghetti on his fork into his mouth and speaks through a mouthful of spaghetti. The fact that she understands him just fine says something about her. “Speaking of letting things go, how’s dating the most stubborn guy in history?”

“Asshole,” Natasha says, and because she knows he won’t stop until she talks about this with him, she relents. She tears the onion ring between her fingers into two pieces. “It’s been fine. We’re fine. He’s – him.”

Clint swallows. “I sure hope he’s him when he gets into bed with you, otherwise it makes things a little bit awkward.”

“ _Barton_.”

Clint gives her another grin before he shoots her a worried frown, and the quick shift of his mood tells her that this is what he has wanted to talk about all along. “Seriously, you’re fine – right? He’s treating you good?”

“I can’t believe that you doubt Captain America’s ability to treat a woman right,” she mutters, because her mind is going places and she needs something to keep her grounded. So, yes. She has been dating Steve Rogers for a month now. Natasha tears her onion ring into even smaller pieces. She can see the clouds in the sky rumble from their table next to the window. She read that it’s going to rain today.

“Well,” Clint shrugs. “I’ve always been more of a Bucky Barnes kind of guy.” He continues instead. Clint’s giving her space, she knows. A choice to not talk about it.

“Don’t let James hear you,” she warns, half-heartedly. “We don’t need him to have an even bigger ego.”

“He already knows,” Clint says. “I’m starting a fan club and he approves. Wanna join?”

“Clint,” Natasha says, trying to sound nonchalant as if this question has not been eating her insides since all of these started. “How did you know that it was the right thing for you – to surrender your career when you met Laura?”

Clint puts his fork down and watches her. Well, she does not mean career specifically, but she knows that Clint knows what she means. “You mean how did I know – as cliché as this sounds, that Laura is the one?”

Natasha nods but doesn’t speak. They seem silly, both the question and the worry inside her. The thing is – she has never done this before, being in a proper relationship that she truly doesn’t want to screw up. But Clint answers her matter-of-factly, as if her question is as serious as something she has asked during a mission briefing.

“I didn’t at first,” Clint tells her. “But I remember wanting to spend all my time with her, and being around her was – and still is, the most fun I’ve ever had.”

“That seems awfully simple,” she observes. Outside, it starts to rain hard and people in trench coats and worn out hoodies dash to get indoors.

“It doesn’t have to be hard,” Clint replies, yet he doesn’t elaborate. Instead, he eats more of his spaghetti. Natasha picks on her pile of onion rings some more. She doesn’t doubt that Steve cares about her, that she cares about him, and that they care about each other. Still, she has her worries. Because while she doesn’t doubt it, he hasn’t really told her what his feelings for her is. To be fair, she hasn’t told him what hers is either.

 _Silly_. She wipes her greasy fingers on the white napkin and reaches for her vanilla latte. She has never been in a serious relationship before, and he has never done anything to make her uncomfortable. Because they agreed to take things slow, didn’t they? She doesn’t even have this fear in her mind all the time; it’s just that some days are more profound, like today –

Before she can let her mind wander any longer, a figure enters the restaurant and catches her sight. Her eyes widen.

Clint follows her gaze, turning his head, before chuckling gleefully. “Talk about the Star Spangled Man with a Plan. Is this a ‘ _speak his name three times and he will appear’_ kind of thing?”

“Shut up,” she says, because Steve closes his umbrella and is scanning the restaurant.  He grins when he spots Clint and her. Steve didn’t tell her that he wants to stop by. What is he doing there?

“What are you doing here?” She asks, once Steve has made his way to their table. Steve frowns, and she realizes that she might have sounded a little bit harsh. He took her by surprise, that’s all. Clint mutters something under his breath that sounds a lot like: _smooth_. She tries to amend her question, softer this time. “Sorry. You didn’t mention that you planned to stop by.”

Steve’s ears redden. His brown leather jacket is damp from splashes of the rain. “I didn’t,” he admits, still standing next to their table. He gestures weakly at the umbrella in his left hand. “I was just – I heard that it was going to rain pretty hard and I wasn’t sure that you have an umbrella with you. Besides, I have some free time from work.” He has a part time job illustrating children’s books and she’s so proud of him that she failed to conceal her excitement the first time he told her that he got hired at the firm, launching herself into his arms and making him breathless with laughter. It’s one of the stupidest things that she has done. He makes her want to do stupid things and the worst part is she doesn’t mind.

Natasha stares at Steve. “Idiot,” she deadpans.

Underneath the table, Clint kicks her shin. She gives Clint a dirty look. “He was trying to surprise you, dumbass,” Clint says, before he shoves another mouthful of spaghetti into his mouth.

“No – I just wanted to –,” Steve says, before he seems to give up on words and chooses to hand her the umbrella instead. His ears redden even more. She accepts the umbrella and he gestures at the door with his thumb. “I’ll see you later. It’s uh, nice seeing you today.”

 _Nice seeing you today_. “You only brought one umbrella,” she says. “How are you going to get home?”

That seems to stop Steve in his track. He shrugs helplessly, obviously not having thought this through. This idiot is her boyfriend, ladies and gentlemen. This idiot who took the subway from the other side of the city because he wasn’t sure that she has an umbrella with her and who forgot to have one for himself. The burst of affection in her chest feels warm and weightless and just like that, she forgets about her worries. She knows that maybe they will come up again in the future, but for now - “Idiot,” she repeats. She raises an eyebrow at Clint, who nods.

“Yeah, go ahead,” Clint says, obviously amused. She knows that he will use this to tease her in the future, at this moment though, she doesn’t care about that. At least not too much. Natasha rummages inside her purse to find some cash before dumping them on the table, for her share of the bill with extra tip money so Clint doesn’t have to pay for his.

She stands up and Steve immediately tries to stop her. “You don’t have to – “

“Steve,” she says. That shuts him up. “Let’s go.”

Steve shakes his head, but he gives Clint an apologetic look. Steve offers her his arm, and normally she would have teased him about it, because he can’t seem to help himself with his polite gestures, but this time she takes it. They stop to get some bagels on their way back and he presses a warm cup of coffee, with no sugar (at which he always comments that she’s not human) because he knows the precise way that she likes it, in between her hands. She hides her smile as she takes a sip.

She has an umbrella in her bag. She’s not going to tell him that.

-

**2.**

The thing about being in the early dating stage is that at some point she spends more and more unplanned nights at his place. But at the same time, she feels that leaving a change of clothes in the spare room might seem too straightforward somehow. Honestly, despite being weirdly too comfortable with each other in life and death situations, the both of them are rookies at this. They haven’t been dating for that long. So she starts keeping a duffle bag in her car to avoid wearing yesterday’s clothes all over again. She gets called in for sudden missions a lot and one time receiving a smug knowing grin from Sam is more than enough. It’s a system that works, and Natasha has no complains about it.

One Sunday in July, a large slimy creature attacks a small neighbourhood near Brooklyn. Because it’s just her luck, naturally by the end of the fight she’s the one who’s covered with the brown, sewer scented substance from head to toe. Lucky her.

“Is that alien shit?” James asks, a little bit too gleeful when he skids his motorcycle to a stop next to where she stands on the sidewalk. The roar of the engine almost drowns out his voice. He turns the machine off as he takes off his helmet. James doesn’t go on big missions like this often, because he refuses to, but Steve is stuck on another catastrophe on the other side of the city and they need his help.

“Shut up or I’ll hug you,” she snaps, trying to salvage at least the tiniest bit of dignity. She uselessly attempts to get rid of the slime in her hair, only to end up with more brown slime on her fingers as a result. She’s sticky and the hot summer weather definitely does not help with her situation. She feels _gross_.

“Scary,” James comments, still cheerful. “The threat will definitely work much better without all the gooey alien shit, good job though, Natalia.”

Wanda walks up to them and eyes Natasha with interest. “Is that – “

“Yes,” James cuts in, grinning. “That, Wanda, is alien shit.”

“Stop saying I’m covered in alien shit,” Natasha says.

“Oh dear,” Wanda says, but she definitely takes a step back and crinkles her nose. And yeah, maybe Natasha doesn’t smell too good right now. “You should go clean up. We’ll deal with the briefing.”

Natasha shakes her hands to get rid of the slime between her fingers. “Thanks Wanda,” Natasha says. Then she turns to James. “Drop me off at Steve’s place.” It’s the closest place that she can think of.

“Aw no,” James complains. She swears James must have picked that up from Clint. “Not my bike.” Not even a second later his eyes glint with mischief and he grins widely like someone just told him that the Dodgers is moving back to Brooklyn. “We’re taking Sam’s car.”

By the time she gets to Steve’s apartment, Sam’s car smells so bad that James had to keep the windows open for half of the drive, (but James’ so damn pleased over this latest prank idea that he doesn’t seem to mind), and the slime has dried on her skin. Which is good, because it means that she’s not going to make any mess on her way up to Steve’s place on the third floor. Which is bad, because it means that she has to hurry up and clean it before it sticks to her skin even more and becomes impossible to remove. She picks open the lock of his front door and rushes into the bathroom.

 The plumbing in his building is crap and it takes forever for the water to heat up. She doesn’t even wait for the water to warm before she climbs into the shower and reaches for the scrub. It takes her what feels like _forever_ , but after an hour she manages to get the worst of the slime off. It’s another hour before she is finally clean.

She grabs the towel she used last night from the hanger and immediately curses out loud when she remembers that she forgot to pick up some clothes from her car. She had parked at the Stark tower this morning. _Way to go_ , she thinks, sarcastic even in her own head. _Her lucky day_. She wraps the towel around herself and sighs. She turns off the bathroom light and closes the door behind her.

Steve’s apartment is spacious. He was insistent on a spare bedroom when he was apartment hunting, and somehow she’s convinced it was because he believed James would move in with him. When James told them that he wants a place of his own, Steve ended up turning the spare bedroom into an art studio instead. It disappointed him, she’s sure. But all of them have been so proud of James. Natasha walks into Steve’s bedroom and stares at his closet. _He wouldn’t mind, would he?_ She frowns, annoyed at herself. It’s not like she can walk around his apartment or laundry her clothes wearing only a towel all day. This hesitation is getting ridiculous.  She yanks his closet door open.

 So that’s how Steve finds her when he gets home – wearing one of his most comfortable t-shirts and one of his boxers, lounging on his bed with a book.

“Are those my clothes?” He asks. He’s already in his civilian clothes – (his one brown leather jacket that he wears everywhere, a grey shirt that’s always too tight, and simple black jeans that his ass always looks great in), although she can tell he hasn’t had the chance to clean himself up, if the leftover black stain on his cheek is any indication.

“I got covered by alien goo,” she says, defensively.

She doesn’t know why she’s defensive.

“Hey, no,” Steve says, and he smiles, in that annoyingly disarming way of his. “You look great in them.” She doesn’t know what to say to that because he’s being sincere; she’s still not used to that, no matter how many times he has thrown heartfelt compliments her way.

So she shrugs. “I look great in anything.”

Steve hums. “I can’t argue with that.” He takes off his jacket and hangs it behind the bedroom door. He starts to search for something to wear in his closet. “Also, we need to have another conversation about picking locks.”

“Yeah,” she says. “You need better locks.”

“Again,” he says. “That is so not the point.”

She stretches her feet on the cold bed cover and wriggles her toes. “Your boxer fits me. I can’t believe how small your waist is.” At Steve’s confused glance over his shoulder, Natasha draws an upside down triangle in the air. “Your shoulder to waist ratio is inhumane. You’re like, a Dorito or something.”

“Oh god,” Steve groans. He lifts his shirt over his arms and dumps it on the floor. The thing with Steve that fascinates her the most is that sometimes, when he blushes because he’s _really_ embarrassed, his blush goes _all the way down_. Like now.  She can be appreciative of that. His muscles don’t hurt either. “Not you too.”

She stops her ogling for a second. “Who else says that?”

Her question makes him pause. “Wait,” he says. “You really don’t know?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I do.”

He beams at her, pleased. “I know something that you don’t know.”

She grabs her phone at the bedside table. “Enjoy it, because it’s not going to last long.”

The next thing she knows, he’s at her side and reaching for her phone. He’s quick. She’s quicker. She wrenches her hand away at the last second. “Give me that.”

Natasha quirks an eyebrow, looking up at him from where she sits. She tightens her fingers around her phone and grins. “You can try taking it from me.”

Okay, maybe it is a bad calculation to say that when he’s shirtless and has nothing to lose, because then he leans in and her breath catches. “Sure,” he says, eyes darting to her lips. “Maybe I’ll try that.” And he kisses her.

“Cheater,” she protests, a few minutes later, when they part and he’s on top of her and his arms are framing her face. His cheeks are flushed and she is very aware of how he hasn’t made any attempts for her phone. “How is it that you’re such a huge sore loser?”

“What, I can’t kiss my girlfriend?” He grins again, wide and reckless. He doesn’t throw around that word often because he knows that she doesn’t appreciate labels, yet when he does, she doesn’t find herself objecting to it. She may even like it. (Not that she’ll ever admit it).

“No,” she says. “Tell me who else and maybe I’ll let you kiss me some more.” Steve tries to sneak another kiss and she moves away. Well. As far as she can go.  Which is not very far at all. She snorts. “Seriously Rogers, I’m not that weak. You can give me that puppy eyes all day long and I still won’t let you if you don’t tell me.”

“Fine,” he fakes a sigh. But he gives in. Like he always does for her. He looks like he’s bracing himself for the worst case scenario. “There may be… a forum on reddit.”

She props herself up on her elbows and stares at him. Whatever she was waiting for, she certainly wasn’t expecting _that_. “Oh my god, Rogers. I have so many questions.”

“Okay,” he says. “Can we do that later – after. You know. More kissing. Have I told you that you look good in my clothes?”

She cackles, and – right. Okay. She can live with that. She puts her phone back on the table. His right hand creeps under her shirt and he splays his fingers on her abdomen.

“I just had a shower,” Natasha complains, reaching out to play with the edges of his hair. He presses a smirk into the crook of her neck.

“You can take another one.” He doesn’t sound regretful at all. The asshole.

“You stink,” she insists again, rolling her eyes.

“I do,” he agrees. When he moves in to kiss her, she meets him halfway.

The next time she comes over, he is assembling a small dresser from IKEA that he claims he needs (she’s 98% sure that she wasn’t supposed to see it until it’s done), and that if by any chance she wants to keep some of her clothes in it, she’s welcome to do so. He says, not meeting her eyes, that he has more than enough space for his stuffs anyway.

And just like that, she has a dresser full of her clothes in Steve Rogers’ apartment.

She keeps wearing his shirts though, and occasionally she even wears his boxers by mistake. Well. They both own mostly black ones and his are just slightly bigger than hers. It’s his fault that his waist is so damn tiny.

(The reddit forum is excellent, by the way.)

-

**3.**

She wakes up sometime late at night to find the bed empty and cold next to her. She blinks for a second, disoriented, before she remembers why it feels wrong. Her clock shows that it’s 2 am, so he’s not on his morning run yet. She wants to stay there under her blanket, her limbs heavy with sleep because of the sleepless nights she spent crouching on a rooftop in Paris last week, yet she finds her feet hitting the wooden floor regardless.

The TV in the living room is on, but there is no sound. A baseball game is playing. Steve sits on the sofa, his back to her, shoulders hunched. He hasn’t bothered to turn on the light.

“Honestly, James spent more than enough time trying to give me a crash course to baseball but I still don’t get the appeal of it,” she says, observing the way he stiffens at her voice. She makes her way around the small living room to stand in front of him.

“Yeah,” he murmurs; his voice thick and rough. He’s looking at the floor, at her feet, and he’s quiet yet she can still hear the tiny hitches in his breathing. “It’s not for everyone, I guess.”

She reaches out to press her fingertips on his cheek. He doesn’t move away, although it’s clear that he wants to. She tips his head up so that he looks up at her. His eyes are red rimmed. With the bluish hue from the TV light, he looks almost ethereal. “What’s wrong?” She whispers, at loss. Because this, here, she’s out of her depth. He was fine before they went to sleep earlier.

“Nothing,” he says, jaw jutted out stubbornly. Not too long ago she would have been just as stubborn, pushing and pushing until he snaps back a reply and whatever issue they have turns into a full blown argument. She knows better now, knows him better now, so she says nothing and merely runs her fingers gently on the side of his face. He leans into her touch, closing his eyes. It was a few more minutes until he speaks again, like he always does, “The Dodgers moved from Brooklyn.”

She frowns. That’s not news. The both of them – meaning James and Steve, have been ranting everyone’s ears off whenever someone within a hundred mile radius so much as breathes the word baseball. She bites back the snappy retort on her tongue and lets him continue. She can be that – patient.

“I guess,” he says, and he takes a deep shuddering breath. “I always figured that once the war was over, if by some miracle we ended up alive, we could catch a game – back home. Never thought I’d end up here instead,” he chuckles, self-deprecating. His eyelashes sweep his cheek when he opens his eyes to look at her. “Is that stupid?”

  And, _oh_. She leans down to cup his cheeks between her hands. _It’s not stupid_ , she wants to tell him, but she doesn’t know how. “You could take me instead,” she says. “We could fly to LA or wherever they play next and take a week off. With James, too. Or – the two of you could do that, and I could teach you how to buy tickets online.”

“I know how to buy tickets online,” he argues.

She leans down to press a kiss on his forehead. “Sure you do, Rogers.”

He twines his fingers with hers and spends several seconds getting his thoughts into order. “Yeah, that’d be nice,” he whispers finally, sighing softly. “But you hate baseball.”

“I’ll live,” she tells him, and maybe she’ll complain about it to Clint or James, later, but this seems to be a small sacrifice if it can make him happy. What was it that Pepper said? Compromises. Compared to the compromises someone in a relationship with Tony Stark has to make on a daily basis, this is definitely nothing. “Move over.”

She drops herself next to him, grabs the remote, and turns the TV volume up. The baseball game is still playing. “Okay,” she says. “Now tell me what the hell is going on.”

She refuses to understand anything that he explains to her, because it is all very stupid and she holds a personal vendetta against James for making fun of Agatha Christie, but they spend the next few hours wide awake and pressed close to each other, and at one point he laughs, so she counts it as a win. Really.

A couple of days later, he’s picking up the laundry downstairs when his open laptop on the coffee table pings. Natasha uncurls herself from the sofa, puts down the book she’s reading, and stretches a lazy hand to swipe at the touch screen. It’s his fault he never uses passwords for anything. Natasha thinks it might be the invitation for the weekend party Jane is going to hold that they have been waiting for. Instead, Natasha finds herself staring, dumbfounded, at an email confirmation for two purchased ballet tickets he has never mentioned to her.

She grins and listens to the sound of him whistling as he enters the apartment.

  _That idiot_.

-

**4.**

Steve likes her long hair. It’s not something that he has mentioned out loud - reading people is something she does for a living. And it’s obvious, by the way he twirls a lock of her hair absentmindedly whenever he has the opportunity to and by the way his gaze lingers a little bit too long whenever she frees her hair from the bun she normally wears. It may be the reason why she’s letting her hair grow, but whatever, right? It doesn’t matter that much.

And sure, her line of work does come with several hazards for long hair sometimes, yet it has never stopped her before. What does is apparently a single visit to Tony Stark’s lab.

And the new fire safety robot that sets her hair on fire.

“Please don’t kill me,” Tony says. He purposely moves so that a table stands between the two of them. And honestly, it may be the only thing stopping her from making him fall on his ass. Or worse.

“Please do kill him,” Bruce deadpans. “It will be the most fun I’ve had in days.”

“What did I say about not wanting to see your robot demonstration?” Natasha glowers. She smells of smoke and something else and honest to god she doesn’t want to see what her hair looks like now. “You just had to go ahead and do it, didn’t you?”

“At least you didn’t get hurt,” Tony offers. Natasha glares.

Tony has enough decency to look sheepish.

.

It’s not that the whole hair on fire incident pisses her that much. (Although it does and she’s going to hold this over Tony for the rest of their lives, maybe even make him pay a little or much). But it’s Friday night. It’s Friday night and she hasn’t seen Steve for a week because he had to go out of town for his design job. So, yeah, it’s Friday night and they have a dinner reservation at a fancy restaurant where they had their first date in.

There is no way she’s going out with this hair.

She surveys her reflection in the bathroom mirror and scowls. Large chunks of hair on the left side of her head are scorched black and unsalvageable. She needs to cut them. Tony already promised that he’s going to get someone to come over and cut her hair first thing in the morning, and while she refuses to trust Tony with this, she trusts Pepper who had stepped into the lab with horrified eyes and promised Natasha an appointment with Pepper’s favorite hairdresser. That’s why she’s here, spending the night in Stark Tower’s guest floor.

She bitterly types a quick message to Steve, who – is probably getting dressed in his nicest suit, and she quietly mourns a lost opportunity to see him in it, because, well, he always looks good in a suit. Then she dumps her phone on the vanity and ignores the way it buzzes right away. Her mood is ruined, possibly for the rest of the week. When she gets like this, the rest of the team knows better than to bother her, and she knows better than to be around them because she cools down quicker with some quiet time for herself.

Although to be honest, she has been in a volatile mood for days.

She reaches out for the scissors on the sink. The handle is cool on her skin.

She has never been good at cutting her own hair, and it’s an absolute bad decision to do it while she’s angry – but she thinks, what the hell. If she ruins it, at least she doesn’t have to sleep with scorched and scratchy hair and the hairdresser will fix it tomorrow morning. So she reaches out for the scissors on the sink, and starts to cut chunks of her hair. The scissors make snapping sounds in the silence of the bathroom.

Her phone buzzes again. She continues to ignore it.

By the time she’s done, her previous long hair is now chopped shorter than she has ever had it and it curls in a messy way, making her cheekbones look sunken because of its uneven cuts. She glowers at her reflection before covering her head with her hoodie. She turns off the bathroom light after she cleaned up the mess of scattered hair and practically stomps out of the room.

She has been having the worst week ever and she doesn’t even know why.

If you ignore the hair on fire incident and its repercussions, her week actually went okay. At least, there was no other occurrence unreasonable enough to piss her off. Yet all the same, she has been on edge and cranky the entire week that Clint has even gone so far and cancelled their sparring session because: “I still like my face where it is, thank you.”

She drops herself on the couch, folding her legs under her and busies herself by flipping through the TV channels, because at least the Stark tower has channels from nearly all over the world. She plans to abuse Tony’s on demand subscription. He owes her that much.

Natasha’s phone buzzes again from where it lays on the coffee table. She glances at it though she doesn’t reach out. Steve’s name flashes on the screen. She feels immature, yes. She told him that she has to cancel and that she can’t meet him tonight and not telling him why may be unfair, but she hopes that by ignoring him, he will take it as a clue to leave her be. Because seriously, he always knows exactly what to say to her, and merely reading a single text from him will definitely make her relent and see him. Besides, telling him what happened is merely not an option. _Tony set my hair on fire today_. She snorts.

That sounds ridiculous _and_ she looks ridiculous.

But he is not Steve Rogers if he doesn’t appear at her door an hour later, and she shouldn’t have expected any less. His eyes, predictably, dart at her hoodie and the rough edges of her hair that she knows are poking out. She crosses her arms in front of her chest and waits.

This is it. “Well?” She snaps. “Get on with it.”

His gaze moves to her face. But instead of making a jab about her hair, he smiles. “I brought food,” he tells her, raising a plastic bag full of boxes. She blinks. She is so surprised that when he brushes past her into the guest apartment, she does nothing. He moves past her through the door and chatters about his week, placing the plastic bag down on the table and opening the boxes. He sits down on the couch and starts to eat, just like that.

She watches the easy way he takes up space and it occurs to her that she has been coming home to an empty apartment.

“Hey,” she says, watching him.

“Hmm, what?” He puts his chopsticks down and looks at her.

“I missed you,” she tells him.

“Don’t sprain a muscle by saying that,” he replies. “I know how hard it is for you.”

“Asshole,” she says.

He grins. “Come on,” he says. “You don’t want me finishing all the dumplings.”

“Don’t you dare,” she replies, and feels the beginning of a smile tugs on her lips.

-

**5.**

They are lining up in a crowded grocery store, her right foot perched on the metal bar underneath the full shopping cart. He is clutching a massive bag of rice between his arms.

They have been dating for almost a year.

“Nat,” he says. “You know that I love you, right?”

“God,” she rolls her eyes. "You're so corny. Why do I love you?" 

“Yeah,” he tells her, laughing. “I've always had the charm.”

She stomps on his foot.

It doesn’t have to be easy, but it doesn’t have to be hard either.

.

**End.**

.

**Author's Note:**

> First of all the biggest apology for all of you for the long waiting period and because I'm sure this is not what you've expected. I am so so sorry, I promise that I tried my best not to butcher them :(  
> ice326: '5+1 things' + 'show me don't tell me'  
> (sorry I did 4+1 :( )  
> finniganbombs: 'Nat starts calling Steve "Dorito" and almost always accidentally wears his boxer briefs because his waist is so damn tiny that they almost fit perfectly on her'  
> anon: 'Steve Rogers weeping and screaming into the abyss because the Dodgers left Brooklyn while he was in the ice.'  
> oh-well-whtevr-nvrmnd: 'Can we get a fic in which Steve really loves Natasha's long hair ;)'


End file.
